This week’s announcement of the Google Living Stories Project (NY Times: Google Unveils News-by-Topic Service) presents the opportunity for us to use the tool to track the Copenhagen conference on climate change and discuss it here.
I’m not a global warming skeptic but the “smug groupthink” evident in some of the recently hacked emails of a small network of climatologists is disturbing.
The Nfld News has 5 climate change-related letters to the editor in yesterday’s paper, all of them reacting to earlier letters from Carleton College professors Joel Weisberg (11/25 letter) and Norman Vig (12/9 letter) about their comments about consensus among climate scientists:
Weisberg:
Vig:
I read the letters Griff alludes to.
The main issue these writers raise is whether science proceeds by consensus or whether minority views deserve respect. The writers accuse Carleton Professors Weisberg and Vig, who use the c-word in their letters to the News, of holding the former view.
Professors N and V can speak for themselves. But I’m underwhelmed by the letter-writers’ logic, for at least two reasons.
The less important reason is that “consensus” has several different meanings in common use, and this ambiguity tends to muddy discussions in which that word arises. One meaning is something like “unanimity”. By this standard, almost nothing is, or can be, scientifically known. Another meaning is more like “large majority”, which has very different practical implications. Evolution deniers often conflate these (and other) meanings, inferring from the existence of technical controversies that the whole theory of evolution is bunk. I don’t put the News letter writers in this sad camp, but both discussions founder to some extent on use of language.
A more important objection to these letters is that they assert a truism, but draw from it an unsupported inference.
That scientific truth is not a matter of majority vote, or even consensus, is perfectly true. If there’s consensus on anything among scientists it’s (ironically) on this very point: scientific knowledge and theories, no matter how broadly accepted, are always “falsifiable” by new data, no matter how inconvenient.
But that’s not at issue here, and I think we needn’t tremble like the letter writers at the risks to Carleton students’ intellectual development. Where the presence or absence of consensus (by any definition) comes legitimately into discussions like this one is in good-faith efforts—especially by non-experts like me—to evaluate the various claims and scenarios that scientists offer. Climate science is complex, and it’s natural and healthy that climate scientists are not unanimous on lots of things.
In the real world, citizens and policy-makers need some way to cope with non-unanimity, as regards climate and everything else. Short of becoming climate scientists themselves, citizens and policy wonks have little alternative but to try to gauge the relative levels of informed opinion on either side of an issue — to look for something approaching a consensus, in other words.
This, too, is an inexact science, and on some issues the appropriate response might be “the jury is really still out” or even “beats the hell out of me.” In climate science there are lots of questions, especially about drivers and rates of change, for which one of those answers is the best I, personally, could do.
But on the big questions — whether global warming exists and whether human fingerprints are on it — it seems to me that something like consensus really does exist, and should be taken seriously. Saying so does not, Northfield News letters notwithstanding, betray any bedrock principle of scientific openness.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/24/the_fix_is_in_99280.html
A much neglected story
The Economist (perhaps not the traditional bastion of Prius-driving, Gore-loving, Climate Change Believers) has a nice piece about how we might, as non-experts, cope with all these seemingly conflicting claims.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/12/trust_scientists
A nice, well-written article analyzing one doubter’s supposed “smoking gun” proving that scientists have been making up evidence for climate change. Thanks for linking to that.
The article’s conclusion:
The Climate gate issue has given the cap and trade crowd a real hard body blow.
Despite much denial from it’s supporters we can not ignore the emails hacked in to from the CRA.
The CRA has been a main source for projections in climate change justifying the cap and trade tax.
The destruction of the source data in combination with the emails has casted serious doubt to the science behind climate change.
This is very unfortunate becuse if there is some truth to manmade climate change then an open and rational discussion has become doubtful.
CRA has simply overplayed their cards. Too bad.
Correction I meant to say CRU not CRA.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/04/AR2009120404511.html
Here is the original article on this as posted by the Washington Post
Tim Goodwin has a letter to the editor in yesterday’s Nfld News:
The two letter writers merely assert a “consensus view” on global warming among scientists … they assert no facts or special understanding. Even Patrick and Paul Z, this blogs global warming trumpeters, assert they themselves have no educational background that would give their own views merit and are relying solely on a perceived scientific consensus. The danger becomes how much of this “consensus” is among scientists whose opinions are uneducated by facts or specific know how but rather a deep seated belief that man is damaging nature. If one looks at the individuals and could already guess that they would subscribe to any theory that has man damaging nature then one has to be very dubious about giving up human freedom to a elite cabal based on that theory.
David--I think the two letter writers were responding to the earlier NfldNews letter which claimed that there was no scientific consensus. Regardless of whether you think “scientific consensus” is important or not it seems hard to claim it doesn’t exist. Most major science professional organizations (who’s job it is to represent their constituency) have made statements in support of the ‘consensus’. I’m not sure what better evidence (or possible counter-evidence) could exist to document the consensus. Of course consensus doesn’t mean there aren’t *any* people who disagree. But the vast majority do.
The ‘danger’ that you cite seems to be that people who don’t have the appropriate expertise (e.g. scientists who don’t study the climate) will make claims and people will give those claims more weight than they might give to non-expert claims. I’ll agree that that can be a problem in all walks of life and with all sorts of expertise. There are two important points in this case:
1. While not all scientists are experts in the climate (most are not) many are expert in the process of science. They are in a good position (better than most non-scientists) to judge whether the process that led to a scientific claim was, in fact, scientific. This becomes relevant as much of the current public debate around climate change is not around the particulars of the science (which few of the debaters are actually expert in), but on the ‘scientificness’ of the process. I’d claim many scientists are in a better position (they have more relevant expertise) in making these sort of judgment than many non-scientists. It would be great if it weren’t so: if public education would leave most citizens with a clear understanding of what science is, how it works, and how to weigh the merits of its claims. But I will state (as an expert in science education) that that is not the case.
2. While we might be wrong to rely on the consensus of scientists who aren’t climate experts, happily we don’t have to. It is also the case that there is a consensus among those scientists who *do* have expertise in the climate. See for example the AGU statement on climate change:
http://www.agu.org/sci_pol/positions/climate_change2008.shtml
or the IPCC report. Again, it is possible to find *some* folks with relevant scientific credentials who disagree on some aspects of the consensus. But most do not.
As far as your theory that all these consensual scientists are actually just acting on some sort of (presumptively unscientific) belief that people are damaging nature I’m not sure what evidence you’re drawing on. My observations from having been in many discussions about these issues with practicing climate scientists are quite different. They largely echo my own sentiments which are that the notion that man could ‘damage’ nature misses the point. First, humans are part of nature. Second, nature can’t be ‘damaged’. Nature is what it is. At one point the earth was anoxic and devoid of life. At one time this point on globe was covered in ice. That’s all nature. Neither good nor bad.
It’s not a matter of ‘damage’ but of change over time.
Changes have and likely will happen that are advantageous to humans and others have and will that are not. Some will happen slowly, and some will happen quickly. Our choices now are not about ‘saving’ nature but about doing what we can to make sure the nature our children and grandchildren grow up within isn’t radically worse (in the sense of difficult to live productively in) than the one we’ve got now. This is a purely pragmatic perspective: we are changing the earth in ways that will make it more difficult for us to live here. We should do something to slow those changes because (and here’s the belief/faith/non-scienctific part) we would rather not put that burden on our offspring.
If you’re not concerned with the long-term prosperity of the human race (the value of which science can not weigh in on) then climate change is likely not important.
Of course there are notions (mostly coming from faith traditions) of nature as ‘good’ and specifically nature *as it exists today* as being the desire/good state of the world. And these beliefs get overlayed by all sorts of people on discussions around the issues. But I personally don’t believe they are serving as motivation for a world-wide movement by scientists to blind themselves to the facts.
Sean, you state “we are changing the earth in ways that will make it more difficult for us to live here.” Certainly the scare tactics of Al Gore would suggest this but all economic indicators do not suggest it. Food is not getting more expensive, etc. I honestly see this as more a religious movement and a grab for power than real science. Even if it were real science, one would have to ask how is turning massive control over to an elite cabal going to fix “the problem” … find me a historian that would agree that this process will result in a solution verses corruption.
David, sorry I don’t quite understand your argument. Are you saying that we should expect current economic indicators (price of food and such) to predict difficulties a generation from now? I certainly wouldn’t. I’m not sure what economic school of thought would. Markets tend to act on information relevant to timescales on which their actors want returns. And most actors in markets I’m aware of are interested in return on investment over years (at most), not decades (or longer). Certainly there are exceptions (institutions making long term investments with no expectation for immediate returns). But they are small players (in total dollar terms) and aren’t likely to sway the entire market.
As far as fears of turning ‘control’ over to an elite cabal I’d agree that’s a long standing theme/problem throughout human history. I’d argue that we have yet to reach a point in history (ever) when there wasn’t some small group of people wielding inequitable amounts of power in ways that don’t necessarily follow the best interests of the many. Certainly, democratically elected government is a step in the right direction, but by no means perfect. Of course much power is wielded these days by the leaders of multinational corporations. And if I have to choose to ceed my power to an elite cabal that claims to represent my interests (but might not) and which claims not to be corrupted by the influence of money (but might be), or to ceed it to corporate interest that only claim to be interested in their own short-term (in the climate sense of short) profit, and for whom the influence of money represents the normal way of doing business I’d choose the former.
Of course I’d agree that I’m not holding my breath that humanity is magically going to find the means to positive collective action. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t the right thing to strive for.
There is an interesting commentary, or at least I think so, in today’s Pioneer press. It is written by Daniel Sarewitz and Samuel Thernstrom. The link is here-
http://www.twincities.com/opinion/ci_14013124?nclick_check=1
They make two good points
“The terrible danger — one that has been brewing for years — is that the invaluable role science should play in informing policy and politics will be irrevocably undermined, as citizens come to see science as nothing more than a tool for partisans of all stripes.”
“…the true complexity of the climate debate has been camouflaged by the myth of pure, disinterested science.
That myth has allowed politicians to shirk their responsibility to be clear about the values, interests and beliefs that underpin their preferences and choices about science and policy. Better to recognize that decisionmakers, depending on their political beliefs, will weigh the evidence and risks of climate change differently when evaluating policy options. Their choices will influence the distribution of benefits and costs, and will have varying and uncertain prospects for success. Voters should evaluate the decisions on that basis, rather than on the false notion that science is dictating the choices.”
I feel their presentation is a good balance that differentiates between science and politics. The politicization of climate change is a distration from what we really need to be concentrating on. I appreciate this observation, also.
“Moreover, problems such as climate change are much more scientifically complex than determining the charge on an electron or even the structure of DNA. The research deals not with building blocks of nature but with dynamic systems that are inherently uncertain, unpredictable and complex. Such science is often not subject to replicable experiments or verification; rather, knowledge and insight emerge from the weight of theory, data and evidence, usually freighted with considerable uncertainty, disagreement and internal contradiction.”
I respect anyone who is willing to be honest and transparent about the limitaions of the particular discipline they are associated with. Their analysis does not refute the majority opinion in the scientific community, but their presentation of it certainly seems more reasonable than some of the sky-is-falling conclusions that have been presented in the media.
Thanks, John G, for the link to the Sarewitz/Thernstrom piece. It’s a good read, and makes (IMO) some valid points.
Here’s one quote:
In other words, the real damage from the East Anglia affair, say S&T, is to public confidence in climate science rather than to the science itself.
I agree completely, except to add that public confidence in science has been shaky for a long time, perhaps forever, but surely starting well before the East Anglians’ e-mails got hacked.
On go S&T:
Again, this “terrible danger” is not just “brewing.” It’s fully fermented, and citizens and politicians have been drinking the brew for years. The last administration, fortunately, finally had its driver’s license revoked.
S&T muse, interestingly enough, on being “seduced, and undone, by the notion of scientific purity”—and their weird coupling of “seduction” and “purity” is good clean fun.
Where S&T get it a bit wrong is in not sufficiently distinguishing the purity of science from that of scientists . It’s one thing for some or even many scientists to behave badly or insensitively or even dishonestly. (I don’t know that the East Anglians did so — and S&T explicitly avoid asserting this, too.) It’s quite another thing to undermine or invalidate the authority of the scientific process itself.
The good news about science is not that scientists can do no wrong. It’s that science, when it works right, is always about checking, validating, and invalidating its own conclusions. It’s an imperfect process, perhaps, but it’s very, very good, and it’s the best we have.
Paul Z.- Glad you enjoyed the commentary. I appreciate this one quote in the article-
“The research deals not with building blocks of nature but with dynamic systems that are inherently uncertain, unpredictable and complex.”
I’m not a scientist, but it validates my estimation of climate and the way it affects weather patterns. I think these two writers are very aware that applying scientific principles to “dynamic systems” is tricky at best. When we start making world-wide changes in our living patterns and believe we are doing it on settled, provable analysis, then I think we are putting or all our eggs in one basket. I would feel a little more comfortable having a contingency plan just in case our conclusions are incorrect. This is where political trends enter the picture. I agree with you that this is the best we have right now, but I think we need to move forward with caution and still not drag our collective feet.
The CRA emails are proof positive that numbers around global warming have been fudged. They do cast doubt on the science behind our premise of man made global warming.
if yoou wanted to know what COP 15 was all about I strongly urge you to listen to the speech of Hugo Chavez. He like nobody else has summed up the purpose of cap and trade.
The notion that we establish a fund for the poor countries to clean up the environment will have the same effect as years of missguided foreign aid. This money will go to the few rich leaders in those countries and will isolate them even more from the populus.
Foreign money will be used by the repective leaders as a buffer to the economies in their own countries. If leaders are not depended on the tax dollars from their voting puplic (if there even are free elections)then what is the incentive for the leaders to serve their own people?
The CRA emails are proof positive that numbers around global warming have been fudged.
Peter you state this opinion as if it were fact. There are quite a number of organizations that have stated exactly the converse. For example here’s what “Nature” has to say:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
and the american meterological society
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/climatechangeclarify.html
or the american association for the advancement of science
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2009/1204climate_statement.shtml
All of these organization remind us that the conclusion that have been reached are based on the work of many different groups collecting many different types of data. No one group is in the position to ‘fix’ the conclusion even if they had the nefarious motives some would claim. That’s how science works.
So I find your assertion that ‘proof positive’ exists completely unconvincing.
The economic/political questions of what a good response to climate change might be (e.g. the merits or lack thereof in cap and trade arrangements, etc…) are a very separate issue. They are not something science can offer a useful opinion on (beyond what the climate impact of a particular scheme *if successful* might be.)
I’d agree that these are the more important issues and that they are very far from settled. Perhaps if we can all get beyond denial of climate change science we could actually tackle the harder issues here. What productive responses we can make to the situation?
What action do you suggest we take? Or can you offer insight into why taking no direct action will lead to the best outcome?
Sean,
If there is nothing to worry about why was the source data destroyed? Why did it take a hacker to get this information, despite several requests made to release the data.
The truth should always be under full disclosure anything else is just suspicious.
BTW I do believe the earth is getting warmer I just don’t believe that it is man made…
The real reason for the alarmist is to introduce more means to control the populus and for poorer country to extort more money from the rich countries.
Did you listen to the Hugo Chavez speech…and even more so did you hear the reaction of the people listening to it?
Cap and trade is just another scheme in the redistribution of wealth. Which makes the CRU findings even more suspicious.
Whilst climate science (like economics) is rather flimsy and always debatable it is the economics of climate science that makes it controversial.
Whilst Pearl Harbor was a tipping point in the debate about whether or not to go to war and commit billions of dollars to that decision, it seems impatient and fiscally irresponsible to commit trillions to this massive undertaking (instead of other perhaps more obvious, certain and worthy ones) without better data, more proof or a similar tipping point.
Global Warming is in danger of becoming just another scare (and hugely expensive one) in company with asbestoses, Y2K, mad cow disease, H1N1 etc.etc. (the list since thee early 60′s is long indeed).
Climate science, like economic science, is best discussed in terms of the discipline being a “social” or even a “political” science.
There is no economics “in” climate science. There are economic implications that fall out of the observations and predictions that climate science makes. But economics is a very separate discipline (with very, very different standards as to what might constitute a theory worthy of general consideration).
In *all* sciences there is a degree of uncertainty in all results. And as with all science we have to clear about the sources and degree of uncertainty in all measurements. Meteorology is a similar science in that its outcomes are often expressed to the general public in ways the make those uncertainties explicit. We’re all used to taking weather predictions with that uncertainty in mind. When the forecasters predict 9-12 inches of snow we (and the forecaster) realize it may be 4 or it may be 16. But few would plan to venture outdoors in shorts on that day. Uncertainty does not mean unknown.
Certainly it would be nice if there was some dramatic event early in the process that would galvanize public opinion. But waiting for the big dramatic event is not always a good decision. Arguing that the best possible course of action in WWII was for the U.S. to wait until Pearl Harbor to get involved seems silly. Clearly, the best actions (given perfect hindsight) would have been early intervention before any of the hostilities started. Countless lives could easily have been saved if people had taken the ‘scare’ about Nazism (and Japanese expansionism) seriously earlier on. Of course I wouldn’t claim that it was realistic to imagine that early intervention could have happened. But to say that waiting for the ‘tipping’ point always leads to the best outcomes seems odd.
A more on-topic example, imagine the financial implication of having acted earlier about the ‘scare-mongering’ surrounding New Orleans’ vulnerability to hurricanes. It would have cost money up front, but the net savings (in cash and lives) would have been huge.
Tipping point events don’t always happen early enough to take useful action.
Clearly you have to weigh:
1. the cost of fixing the problem
2. the certainty of the problem
3. the cost of ignoring the problem if it is real
and do the math. It’s a bet and you have to know the odds. Too many people seem to dislike the game and so want to deceive themselves about the odds. It’s certainly human nature. And there are certainly countless wolf-crying incidents throughout history that have inured us to cries of crisis. But neither of those facts changes the actual odds in #2.
Lots of people seem bent (for I think obvious reasons) on mixing the science with the economics. It only clouds the issue. If you claim that we have no idea (in a political/economic sense) about how to solve the problem I might agree with you. But that’s different than saying the problem doesn’t (or is unlikely) to exist. I disagree with that strongly.
There are both technological and natural ways to lower energy usage whether or not you believe it should be done for political, ecological, moral or whatever cal reasons you can imagine. I am hoping and praying that the era of “this is good enough” and “whatever” give way to “why don’t we do the best job we can with the tools we have and do better when we have better ones” era, so we can move on and leave a cleaner, healthier, and happier world to the children.
I give a loud shout out to Hennepin County for going telecommute as of late. They are already experiencing lower costs, happier and more productive employees.
Sean, though there was plenty of evidence, incidents and intelligence pre 9/11 to recommend counter-attacking terrorism, it took 9/11 to galvanize the country into agreeing to spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives in so doing; many would say over-doing. No such persuasion exists re global warming and, again, it is folly to back the notion that we are all going to die (again) unless we throw away what little treasure we have left on these unproven speculations.
Contemporary Climatology is a social science (much like economics) in that it does not take a consensus but rather a weight of numbers plus a silencing of dissent to get your theory adopted and to secure your funding. Both are unlike meteorology which more resembles astrology in that the predictions of these disciplines are not pompous and self-important and are fun and lead to good daily conversation.
Bright, we all agree that it is preferable to drink clean water and perhaps this alone merits the fear mongering; yet I think what comes out of all these scares (and they are numerous) is why we as a species insist on being scared to death in order to get on with out lives.
Norm, if the point of your 9/11 analogy is: even when faced with compelling evidence of a very real future danger people are likely to wait until it’s too late to take action --then I wouldn’t disagree. All I’ve been trying to say is that the warning is likely correct: not that I believe people are likely to end up taking appropriate action.
I don’t think anyone is saying we’re going to die unless we throw away all our treasure (at least not that I’ve heard). The IPCC report outlines what seems likely to happen (spoiler: not everyone dies). There have been some arguments that the economic cost of doing nothing (as a result of the sort of things the IPCC report say will happen) will (very very) greatly outweigh the cost of possible solutions. So it’s not an end of the world situation. It’s a good long term economic bet situation.
Now I don’t know how much we should believe those economic arguments. Perhaps they are wrong and we’re better off (economically) just staying pat and letting things unfold. That may be. But it doesn’t invalidate the science.
If there is nothing to worry about why was the source data destroyed? Why did it take a hacker to get this information, despite several requests made to release the data.
The truth should always be under full disclosure anything else is just suspicious.
Peter, as I understand it some old source data may have been tossed as it was expensive to store and when tax payers clamor for more ‘efficient’ government costs have to be cut somewhere. At the time the data was tossed (the 80′s) climate change wasn’t on the radar and it seemed a clear choice. I’d agree it would have been better to have bumped peoples taxes a bit so they could have afforded to store the data.
The request for the information was complicated by the fact that (again because of budget constraints) the original data (which CRU gets from various national weather services) is not given out freely, but is sold. It is sold because that is (in part) how those national weather services fund their operations. So CRU didn’t have the rights to redistribute that data. Hence it’s inability to simply turn over the data when people asked. Again, I’d agree it would be better for the science if those national weather services had been funded sufficiently to be able to make the data available freely. I’d whole-heartedly agree that the ‘truth’ should be freely available. Unfortunately when we choose to rely on free-market forces to fund parts of our science we are choosing data secrecy.
Nothing about the data handling strikes me as being at all suspicious.
Yeah Sean those evil free market sources and those mean capitalist made the CRU destry the source data..LOL.
I bought my daughter and external hard drive for christmas 1 TB for $100 dollars at Best Buy. Data storage is just so expensive.
America has been made great by free markets and capitalism we didn’t achieve this by being Europeans…quiet the opposite.
Did you listen to the Chavez speech at COP 15..based on your comments he might be a close kin to you….LOL
This from National Geographic…google “global warming on mars”…
Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.
In 2005 data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide “ice caps” near Mars’s south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.
Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.
“The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars,” he said.
Solar Cycles
Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun’s heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets.
Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced periodic ice ages throughout their histories.
“Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance,” Abdussamatov said.
Palin speaks on global warming:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_12/021552.php
Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.
of course that national geographic article also points out that the scientific community gives no credence to the hypothesis because:
“the idea just isn’t supported by the theory or by the observations”.
That’s right Sean; yet another hypothesis. So how about not spending loads of money until we know for sure…continue the search for the scientific “truth” about global warming, humankind’s role is its cause and possible amelioration…rather than buying into “belief”, no matter how many support the hypothesis.
Norm,
You say:
Yes, that would be folly. Does anyone advance such a notion?
And then:
Uff da. I’m no climatologist, economist, or meteorologist, but one suspects you’d get arguments from practitioners of all of those fields. (Less clear to me how an astrologer would feel.)
The part I find wrong-est—if indeed you’re serious—is the idea that cabals of climatologists, or economists for that matter, have and exercise some mysterious power to “silence dissent” in order to grab big research bucks. Individuals may sometimes behave badly, in any field, but dissent and disagreement are what science is all about. Well-supported contrarian views in science get more, not less attention, than conventional wisdom, and most scientists like nothing better than to upset apple carts.
The problem with contrarian scientific theories is not, with few exceptions, that they’re ruthlessly suppressed. It’s that contrarian scientific theories are so often wrong.
Peter I must admit I tossed in the evil free market sources bits largely for your benefit. Glad you enjoyed them. Hard drives are certainly cheap. The CRU data was tossed in the mid-80′s when 1 terabyte worth of disk space cost $100 million. Of course what they tossed was mag tape and paper. And what they tossed was their *copies* of original data collected *and still available* from national weather services who are responsible for curating the information. No data was lost.
So how about not spending loads of money until we know for sure.
Norm, in science we have a very specific sense of what it means to know “for sure”; in fact that’s sorta the whole deal with science as a way of knowing. We’ve already reached that point with climate change.
It seems in all this discussion about “knowing for sure”, as the article I referenced in the Strib stated, we are not dealing with building blocks of nature but dynamic systems which are uncertain, unpredictable and complex. Is this statement true or false? If it is true, then we will never be able to achieve a level of certainty about climate that is possible with, say, gravity. If this is the case, then the equation boils down to what or whom we believe, IMO.
The facet I have not heard posited in this discussion is how the natural world around us is able to adapt. A case in point is the First Gulf War, where Sadam set pretty much all the oil wells in Kuwait afire. I remember reading about this in National Geographic, saw the pictures of the blackened skies, and read the dour predictions of how this would turn the Gulf of Arabia into a lifeless cesspool that might never be able to be cleaned up. Interestingly enough, within a couple years, there was no trace of the polution anywhere in the Gulf, and sea life is flourishing. It seems that scientific certainty is limited to those observations that can be replicated and documented in such a way that the laws governing the observations can be defined with certainty. Maybe I am missing something, but I don’t see that “scientific certainty” in the articles I have read about climate science. I don’t deny that things are changing in our atmosphere, but I think we are exalting ourselves a little by claiming human-only responsibility for it.
John, you wrote:
Scientists are not claiming that we are the only cause of climate change -- just that we are a non-insignificant contributer to it.
Sean, what “science” are we talking about here? Climatology? Meteorology? Economics? And pray tell when was that point reached?
Patrick, sure we are not an insignificant contributor but is it wise to throw away gazillions of dollars on what essentially remains at this stage highly debatable observations, inferences, postulates, data collection, hypotheses, leaps-to-theories, calls for action, pleas for funding, arrogant dismissal of counter-arguments, panic, fear mongering, and hasty international conferences with little of no progress or agreement.
This is all reminiscent of what John George is talking about as well as WMD in Iraq and all the other scares that we seems to delight in.
Norm, we’ve reached that point with climate science. An international group of climate scientists gathered a bit ago. They pulled together all the relevant data and publications and drew conclusions about exactly how much we knew and what the uncertainties are. The conclusions were that there were still some large uncertainties but there were still some things we could be confident of. They wrote this up in a report. And then were given the nobel prize for the work.
Here’s their summary for policymakers:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf
The IPPC was one of the main reciipients of data collected by thr CRA.
Here is a noble idea: create a world body that will force changes in the climate debatte without consent of all the countries.
Call me paranoid, but this sounds a lot like a “New World Order” to me.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6963482.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=3392178
ttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/janetdaley/6845967/Therell-be-nowhere-to-run-from-the-new-world-government.html
Now where have I heard this before hmm ??
Yeah, right !
Volker, hort die Signale!
Auf, zum letzten Gefecht!
Die Internationale
Erkampft das Menschenrecht
Translation:
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
Peter you’re once again intermixing two separate issues.
The first is the question of whether science has a defensible claim about human activity driving climate change. This is the point I’ve been focusing on. Unless you believe in global conspiracies that encompass almost all climate scientists the answer here is clear. (If you do believe that there’s not much we have to talk about).
The second is what (if any) actions folks should take in response to this. I’m not making any claims here, and in fact would agree with you about the merits of Gordon Brown’s suggestion.
The problem is that’s it’s a common (and misleading) rhetorical strategy for folks who want to make an argument about the second issue to (instead of actually making the argument in that realm) just make a claim that first realm is unclear and therefore we shouldn’t talk about the second.
I can think of all sorts of strong arguments against the current activities that are going on in the second realm. There’s no need to reduce your credibility but mixing in spurious claims about the first.
The fact that politicians use this to further impose controls over us should be worrisome to all of us, and certainly bring in question SOME scientists motivation.
Most scientists have rely on government funding to keep their research alive.
What would happen to all those climatologists if they would declare global warming is just a natural cycle?
What would be the need for government to support further research? Scientists are not as independend as they used to me..just follow the money.
True, there may be *some* scientists who imagine they’ll get more money if they falsify their work. But again, the whole point of the process of science is to weed out external influences and indefensible claims and get down to those limited thing for which actual compelling evidence exists. Unless you believe in a world-wide conspiracy in which virtually all climate scientists have been willing to toss their professional ethics to the wind and accept and promote things they know to be false then we’re left with the consensus conclusion.
That sort of ethical lapse has been seen in some field (look to medical research) and generally goes hand in hand with large sums of money passing hands (usually from drug companies). And those are cases where the particular treatment/drug was only ever studied by one, or a few scientists. So you only need a small group of unethical people to tip the balance. Here we’re talking about an issue that’s being independently studied by thousands of individuals in many different groups.
I’ve heard no evidence of greenpeace, or the ‘elite cabal that’s secretly planning to control the masses’ passing money to all the climate scientists in the world. Seems like if I was bent on distorting the scientific process to create hysteria and promote some sort cause of world domination then picking climate change as my target would be profoundly stupid. I’d pick some science that wasn’t based on evidence that had already been accumulating for millenia (and so would require a very fancy falsification strategy), that wasn’t practiced by lots of scientists around the world and that had a faster timeline for action. Perhaps some sort of secret disease that was going to kill us all.
No climate scientists are getting rich on this. They may be hiring more post-docs, they may be switching their research focus to a more climate-change related topic, they may be encouraging more of their grad students to stay in the field as the job prospects are better. But none of those things seems like it’s gonna be worth risking professional suicide.
Do you really believe this sort of world-wide conspiracy among scientists is going on?
If I follow the money I see the resources of the anti-climate change groups (big petroleum) far out-stripe what has been spent on climate research and I see a small number of individuals (who get money from those big petroleum companies) spreading lies and dissent--writing into local papers in distant small town with misleading claims.
Sean,
Falsifying maybe to strong of a word, but bending the truth in order to justify once job is more plausible.
Thomas Sowell sums it up much better than I can….the title sums up my feelings.
If science gets manipulated by poltiticians we the people get hurt in the process.
Big Pharma is not the only one using money to get their goals….I would add big government in to the mix as well.
Case in point..Nelson and Landrieux
Truth Is Victim When The Left Abuses Science
By THOMAS SOWELL
Posted 12/21/2009 06:50 PM ET
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Science is one of the great achievements of the human mind and the biggest reason why we live not only longer but more vigorously in our old age, in addition to all the ways in which it provides us with things that make life easier and more enjoyable.
Like anything valuable, science has been seized upon by politicians and ideologues, and used to forward their own agendas.
This started long ago, as far back as the 18th century, when the Marquis de Condorcet coined the term “social science” to describe various theories he favored. In the 19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels distinguished their own brand of socialism as “scientific socialism.” By the 20th century, all sorts of notions wrapped themselves in the mantle of “science.”
“Global warming” hysteria is only the latest in this long line of notions, whose main argument is that there is no argument, because it is “science.”
The recently revealed destruction of raw data at the bottom of the global warming hysteria, as well as revelations of attempts to prevent critics of this hysteria from being published in leading journals, suggests that the disinterested search for truth — the hallmark of real science — has taken a back seat to a political crusade.
An intercepted e-mail from a professor at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England, to a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, warned the latter: “Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the U.K. has a Freedom of Information Act” and urged the American professor to delete any e-mails he may have sent a colleague regarding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
When a business accused of fraud begins shredding its memos and deleting its e-mails, the media are quick to proclaim these actions as signs of guilt. But, after the global warming advocates began a systematic destruction of evidence, the big television networks went for days without even reporting these facts, much less commenting on them.
As for politicians, Sen. Barbara Boxer has urged prosecution of the hackers who uncovered and revealed the e-mails!
People who have in the past applauded whistle-blowers in business, in the military or in Republican administrations, and who lionized the New York Times for publishing the classified Pentagon papers, are now shocked and outraged that someone dared to expose massive evidence of manipulations, concealment and destruction of data — and deliberate coverups of all this — in the global warming establishment.
John G,
You asked:
IMO it isn’t clear enough to be unequivocally true or false.
It is certainly true that dynamical systems can be unpredictable and complex; the mathematical theory of chaos aims to define, quantify, and (to the extent possible) even predict some things about systems that behave “chaotically”. If this seems counterintuitive, note that a coin flip is in one sense completely unpredictable, and yet the percentage of heads in 1000 coin flips hovers quite predictably near 50.
The first part of your question is, for me, most problematic, as it seems to assume implicitly that “the building blocks of nature” are somehow not uncertain, unpredictable, or complex.
This assumption is false. A lot of things in nature are, of course, completely predictable, like what happens after an apple drops from the stem. But randomness is built into nature, too, as in determining which stem the apple falls from, and who’s sitting below when it happens. Evolution through mutation — randomness controlled by selection — offers lots of other good examples.
More:
So far, so good. Indeed, the findings and predictions of climate science are subject to revision, tuning, recalculation, etc. And gravity is doubtless better understood, and more amenable to confident predictions. (But not even gravity is *fully* understood — see last Sunday’s Strib, for instance, on possible observation of “dark matter” by detectors deep underground in a former mine in northern Minnesota. Dark matter could help us understand better why stuff sticks together rather than flying apart.)
And this:
If by this you mean only that mathematical-style certainty is elusive in natural science, then I’m with you. But if you mean that, lacking perfect certainty, natural science becomes nothing more than believing whatever or whomever you prefer, then I couldn’t disagree more. That way lies real chaos.
Paul Z.- The “building blocks” statement is not mine, but lifted from the comentary by Sarewitz & Thernstrom. I’m assuming that they are refering to those natural phenomina whose interactions can be replicated and predicted with some certainty. Perhaps I am giving them more credit than they are due in that assumption. As I understand mathmatics and science, it is mathmatical models that define or quantify the certainty of the scientific observations, in reference to your last statement, “…If by this you mean only that mathematical-style certainty is elusive in natural science, then I’m with you…” That is indeed to what I am refering.
That was a very interesting article about the theory of dark matter. Naive as I am, I supposed that gravity was a foregone conclusion. It appears the understanding of the mechanics of it are not.
Back to the problems we are experiencing with the atmosphere, most of the articles I read claim that man has soul responsibility for these changes. I also read that we can correct this direction, but it involves turning the whole world on its ear. I just don’t believe that, when it can’t be demonstrated mathmatically. Man’s total annual contribution of CO2 into the atmosphere is still less than 4% of the total. Perhaps societies can be directed by minorities, but I have yet to see natural phenomina directed by a minority.
Anyone interested in reading a very exciting and thought provoking plan for achieving 100% clean energy in 20 years?
Go to FLYP, an on-line magazine, and read the article entitled “Powering a Green Planet”. It is written by two California environmental research scientists/professors. Their names are Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi; one at Stanford, one at UC/Davis.
Whether or not you agree that such a plan is possible to achieve, please keep an open mind. And don’t balk at the cost… think of the cost of building the system we now are functioning with, and its ultimate costs.
This plan makes the most sense to me of anything I’ve read; making use of all the increments of various systems rather on relying on finding the ONE perfect replacement is so reasonable.
Twenty years is not a long time at all… in fact an amazingly short time… to build a new energy structure. Think about it…
Falsifying maybe to strong of a word, but bending the truth in order to justify once (sic) job is more plausible.
Peter, no it isn’t. The whole point of the scientific process is to relentless question every theory put forward; whittling away any error (whether an intentional ‘bending’ or an inadvertent error). So while a single scientist may put forward something that bends the truth the process will ensure that what comes out the other isn’t distorted.
I’d absolutely agree that the outside of the scientific process there are lots of parties cherry picking and distorting information from within the process to their own ends. And I’d agree that this is a huge problem and we have to think very critically about claims made by non-scientists (or scientists who make claims that run counter to what the process has produced) about what the science ‘says’. But that is not reason to toss out the outcomes of the process.
The emails (when taken out of context) don’t put those particular scientists in a good light. But to leap from there to claims that climate change isn’t justified is an illogical leap. It belays either a profound mis-understanding about how science works, or intent to deceive. And perhaps a bit of both.
Kiffi- That is a good article in FLYP. It is the best proposal I have heard form anyone who might actually have a position to exert some influence. Combining a variety of types of energy production is not a new theory, but this article is the first to give some realistic numbers toward that goal by combining only renewable sources. The proposals I have run across before always had some carbon-based method in the combination. That track does not really free us from the problems we are facing. Hopefully, there will be some political/economic traction to these ideas. Any changeover in technology is alwauys costly, but if we factor in the whole future into the equation,then $100 trillion is probably not that much. The initial investment of that much money over the next 20 or so years is what is perhaps a little scarey, especially with the national debt we are presently facing.
Kiffi,
Thanks for the ref to the FLYP article. The same plan, by the same authors, appeared in the last few months in Scientific American. Another “Grand Plan”, this one focusing almost solely on solar energy for the US, appeared in Scientific American about a year ago.
Both of these plans would involve gigantic investments in infrastructure, together with considerable political will and courage. Judge for yourself what the opinion of a non-economist and non-politician may be worth. But I expect the financial costs are reasonable, given the pots of money we now spend on fossil fuels — let alone the ancillary costs and troubles. I’m less optimistic on the political front.
In any event, the best source I’ve seen anywhere on renewable energy is the book Without Hot Air , by David MacKay, a British physicist at the U. of Cambridge. (I’ve recommended it before on this site.) MacKay’s main point is that serious discussion about energy has to be informed by numbers and data — and he provides a lot of them. MacKay looks largely at possible energy strategies for the UK, but nearly all of the analysis makes sense anywhere the laws of physics apply.
You can download the entire book, free, at http://www.withouthotair.com , or just read sections here and there. (Start with the 10-page synopsis.) If 300 pages on such stuff sounds daunting, don’t be fooled: MacKay is a first-rate science writer, has a nice British sense of humor, and isn’t afraid to gore (Gore?) anyone’s sacred ox.
you can get all of it, free, at
John,
You say:
I think you meant sole responsibility, but perhaps there’s something apt about “soul” here, as that, too, may be at risk.
And then:
A bit of rhetorical overkill, no? Plans I’ve read or heard of—including the one Kiffi pointed to and you praised—hardly amount to inverting the world.
And then this:
We’ve been over this before.
In a system that’s evenly balanced even a small extra input will build up over time. The “carbon bathtub” is a nice analogy: check out http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/big-idea/05/carbon-bath
Paul- I guess that will teach me to write something secular in the midst of a scriptural discussion! My soul could get carried away, but my sole purpose is to repent. I receive your correction. Thanks for pointing out my spelling error.
We have discussed the fragileness of the atmosphere before. If climate is a “dynamic system” as S & T suggest, then is it not constantly adjusting itself to compensate for short term (century or so) changes? How long a time period has the atmosphere been “equally balanced?” I’m going to do a little research on this, for I honestly do not know what is out there about it. The example I know of is the Gulf of Arabia that I referenced before.
As far as the rhetorical overkill, that is debatable. If it were an easy task we were embarking on, it seems there would not be quite so much opposition. Perhaps I am wrong in my estimation, but it seems there is a lot of thinking that is going to have to change over the next couple decades to accomplish the task proposed in the FLYP article.
Carleton Prof. Norm Vig has a guest column in today’s Nfld News titled Global warming heats up talk in Northfield.
Copenhagen has taught us that any changes for cleaner energy for the U.S. or other developed countries is going to be offset by more consumption from underdeveloped countries, such as India and China.
Even if everyone in the world agreed that global warming was true, and if everyone agreed that reducing carbon emissions was the solution, we would still have the massive political problem of implementation.
David,
I think we knew these things before Copenhagen. What’s your point? What should we do?
Paul: My point is that the U.S. focus has to be realistic. Summits like Copenhagen are feel-good political solutions offering very little hope. Summits, cap-and-trade, ethanol, and other proposed solutions are just putting a finger in the dike.
Ultimately, I think the solution has to be economic. So long as carbon based energy is cheaper than non-carbon based energy, carbon emissions will climb in the world. Spending massive amounts of government money to prop up non-carbon industries is foolish unless those industries can produce cheaper energy in the long run.
David: Christmas Eve and all, makes me really object to your notion of world wide conferences, hoping to achieve a world wide treaty, are nothing but “feel good” endeavors.
We, the ‘exceptional’ USA, cannot do this alone; it is a world wide problem, to state the obvious.
I consider myself to be ‘ultra- American’, heritage-wise, and I consider that it is America’s responsibility to provide strong leadership in a world-wide solution. There can be no more isolationism even if we favored that position because it’s more simple… but that’s just it…it’s too simple, and our lives are not simple anymore.
We’re not on a self-sufficient farm.
Kiffi: We have to take seriously the arguments of the right about the need to be practical, not idealistic. For example, Sarah Palin argues that America can spend massive amounts of money without making a significant reduction in greenhouses gases worldwide. She is right. Do we really want to repeat our experience with ethanol?
Furthermore, we have no assurances that global warming would be halted even if, by some minor miracle, we could control carbon emissions better. The earth has heated and cooled over the ages for reasons that are out of human control.
I haven’t heard one good, realistic solution from anyone on either side of the debate. What I heard from Copenhagen is that China, India, and the underdeveloped world are not going to restrict their carbon emissions at the expense of their country’s economic development. They will be at a permanent disadvantage if the status quo is maintained.
David- I think you have a good point, there. The thing I have wondered is if we will see technology advances come at a fast rate, as in home electronics? If this is the case, then manufacturing costs should decrease as companies recoup R&D costs. The one thing we are stuck with is the cost of infrastructure. No one has come up with a way of distributing energy to homeowners aside from a copper wire. Communications are a different story, as these can be done wireless. China is a good example of a country that has leap-frogged the communications infrastructure. They were slow at distributing hard-wired communications, so when cell phones came along, they were able to jump right into the mass communications field. The US is still strapped with hundreds of thousands of miles of copper/fiber optics phone lines that we need to make pay for themselves somehow. It is like the old saying, the early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.
David:
Yes, we should be realistic. What “realistic” means is an open question.
The idea that solutions have to make economic sense is also well-taken. But again it leaves the hard questions open. For instance, deciding whether carbon-based energy is indeed cheaper than the alternatives depends on which costs are accounted for, and how honestly. Spending some “government money” to encourage non-carbon-based energy sources — and to avoid some of the existing “massive” ancillary costs of carbon-based energy — could prove to be a good investment.
The environmental strategy that makes most sense to me economically is a carbon tax. Some or all of such a tax could be rebated to encourage carbon-free or less carbon-intensive alternatives — or even to offset other taxes, like payroll or Medicare or social security. But it seems cleanest to me to keep it all in the energy family.
Paul Z.- I really don’t understand the purpose for an energy tax. Is this supposed to be a source of funds for alternative energy systems? Is it supposed to be an incentive to reduce carbon consumption? Or, is this something that is yet to be determined? It seems to me that if we want to reduce CO2 production, then taxing those who produce it is a negative way to approach it. Those persons/industries that have high CO2 output, and can afford the extra taxes, are not going to change their production methods. They will simply raise the prices of their products to cover the extra expense. A case in point is Al Gore. He resides in a 10,000 sq. ft. house that consumes the energy of a small town, but his carbon foorprint is supposedly zero because of the carbon credits (taxes) that he buys. Is his lifestyle and those like him really reducing the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere? I think not, but that is my personal vendetta.
Looking again at industries that emit large amounts of CO2, if new processes are found to produce the same products and reduce the amount of CO2 emitted at the same or less cost of production, then that is real progress. Not only does it energize entrepeneurship, but it actually accomplishes the goal of reduced CO2 contributions. How does a carbon tax relate to this?
John G:
A well-known effect of taxing anything is to discourage its use, either altogether or compared to less expensive alternatives. This is so regardless of the taxer’s intent, or of the purpose to which tax revenue is put. (It might not be so in the case where no alternatives exist.) So yes, a carbon tax (note I didn’t say “energy tax”, though perhaps that’s thinkable) could discourage carbon consumption, and encourage alternatives.
How individuals (like Al Gore) respond to tax incentives and disincentives can make for good journalistic fun, but it has little to do with the larger principle. What counts most is what happens at large scale.
The idea that rich corporations are somehow immune to tax incentives is wrong. Corporations might try to pass costs off to consumers, but those same consumers, given the choice, could switch to lower-priced alternatives. Just watch beef, pork, and chicken prices.
How governments should use carbon tax income (e.g., rebate some or all of it to non-carbon-based energy producers, reduce income or business taxes) is a separate question. There are traps to avoid, and in one sense the question is meaningless — money is fungible. Still, IMO, it’s reasonable for a society to divert some of the proceeds of discouraging an unwanted practice to encourage a hoped-for result. We do this already in lots of ways. (One of my favorites is that a portion of visa fees from temporary IT workers in the US is ploughed back into scholarships for US citizens majoring in science and technology disciplines.)
You rightly praise the hope that CO2-heavy industries might find ways to do their thing at lower CO2 cost. That’s what’s best about a carbon tax: it gives CO2-heavy industries a clear and simple market incentives to reduce emissions rather than to leave cleanup and climate-change costs to the society at large. In your words, a carbon tax can “energize entrepreneurship.”
Paul Z.- My term “energy tax” was just poor composing on my part. I was meaning “carbon tax.” As long as the taxes collected are actually invested back into industry to promote R&D of alternative energy sources, it will be productive. I personally do not have full confidence that the government will be able to hold that course, but time will tell. As long as we are actually producing less CO2, then, according to the science out there, we will see at least a stabilization in the climate change. That issue seems to suggest a responsibility on everyone’s part.
Paul: I don’t see how Copenhagen got us any closer to a solution.
John G:
Re 49.3 … I think it’s reasonable to invest at least some of the proceeds of a carbon tax to promote alternative energy.
But note that, even without such reinvestment , taxing carbon-heavy sources would raise their prices and hence encourage alternatives. So reasonable people might argue that at least some of such moneys should offset other taxes. I’d especially expect to hear this from economic conservatives, but am glad to welcome you, John, to the ranks of big government spenders.
David,
Re 49.4: I didn’t follow the Copenhagen summit story closely, so I have no strong opinion about whether it got us closer to a solution. It certainly doesn’t seem to have revolutionized world opinion, or galvanized united action. But it might prove to be part of a long process toward improvement.
Either way, so what? What does the success or failure of one particular event have to do with pros and cons of various economic strategies? Do I miss your point?
Paul Z.- Part of the money they are spending began in my paycheck, let alone what I pay in increased costs of goods and services. Let’s just say I feel more like a draftee than an inlistee.
Patrick- I just saw your comment in post #30. This is a quote I lifted from one of numerous articles about the cause of global warming.
“While arguments persist, there’s little doubt that human-produced greenhouse gas emissions play a major role in the current warming trend. Nature has a role, but it pales in the face of increasing emissions from human activity.”
Here is the link to the article.
http://blog.sustainablog.org/the-top-causes-of-global-warming-natural-or-human/
According to the research I have found, manmade contributions of CO2 to the atmosphere have increased by about 1% of the total over the last 150 years or so. That is why I question the accuracy of this statement above “… but it (natural causes) pales in the face of increasing emissions from human activity…” Seems to me like Chicken Little all worked up.